Forum Features & Updates

Great stuff as usual Rob

Brief update - about 40 more images added this evening - all of the Stoke area. Sort by "most recently added first" to see the new ones. Total now 1069.

Further to John's excellent topic-statistics compilation, some of you might not be aware of the Forum stats that are linked at the very bottom of these pages. It automatically updates itself and shows weekly, monthly, yearly and "all time" graphs for topics and members - so as well as the most popular threads, we can also see which members can't pull themselves away from this forum!

This post is to tell our wonderful forum members about another little treat. I very recently bought a set of 25 original Joseph Wingrave photographs from a very old album, and they're now uploaded in super-size to my "Rob's pics" collection. If you set the image order (top right) to "Most recently added first", then the first 25 images will be the newly uploaded Wingraves. For photos of around 150 years old they are astonishing - I would think many modern cameras of many megapixels would barely compete for detail. Here are two examples. The first shows the man in the doorway of J. Wingrave's own Chemist's shop (shown in full in image c01117). My first instinct was that it might be Mr. Wingrave himself, but the only other photo of him that I've ever found is one I used on this page - and so I don't think it is him. The second image is a detail from the Art School in Ford Street (image c01114) - who knew those faces were there? If there are any other details that intrigue you when you view the photos, please let me know and I'll see if I can get a close-up for you.

I ogled these when they were up for sale. You're a very nice guy letting us have access.

Thank you and respect, you are a most generous man. Derek.

You're both very kind, thank you. A collection like that was simply a must, and I really wanted to make sure it didn't end up in the hands of anyone who might simply hide these super, historic images away in a drawer, as so many old photos sadly end up.

Amazing pictures, and may I add my thanks. Looking through them, this particular image reminded me of the huge Christmas decoration figures put up outside Owen Owen every year - visible in this photograph! The bus on the right is exactly where I used to catch the no.2 bus for Radford (Jubilee Crescent).